Elon Musk: What's next for SpaceX

SpaceX has docked the first commercial spacecraft, the Dragon capsule, to the International Space Station. Just before launch, SpaceX founder Elon Musk discussed how he hopes to make a difference in orbit - and beyond.

You claim to be getting away from the government-assisted model of space flight engineering and the lack of innovation that approach entails. Yet your website says your Falcon 9 rocket's main Merlin engine design is inspired by the Apollo lunar module main engine. So you still depend on government-inspired inventions?Heh [laughs]. We should probably change that text, it's probably not the best in the world. That's a bit like saying a modern-day car is based on what Daimler and Benz did. We're in fact using something that's far more advanced than they had on the moon, which was a type of injector called a pintle, a large single coaxial injector - and that was the basic architecture we used. We said that originally because it had to be super safe - it was a single point of failure - and it's a type of engine architecture that is naturally stable and is not subject to combustion harmonics that can cause a combustion chamber to explode.

What kind of technology do you really want to advance, given the freedom you have to do it your own way?The really big advance, the fundamental breakthrough that's needed, is a fully reusable rocket system. There was an attempt at that with the space shuttle but it failed. The space shuttle was only ever going to be partially reusable as the main tank - the primary flight structure to which the orbiter and booster were attached was discarded on every mission. And the parts that were reused were so difficult to reuse that the shuttle ended up costing four times more to run than an expendable rocket of equivalent payload capacity. The space shuttle was often used as an example of why you shouldn't even attempt to make something reusable. But one failed experiment does not invalidate the greater goal. If that was the case we'd never have had the light bulb.

Can you outline the economics?The fuel, oxidiser and pressurant on a Falcon 9 rocket accounts for about 0.3 per cent of the cost of the mission, about $200,000. But each mission costs $60 million because we have to make a new rocket every time.

And SpaceX manages that by doing everything possible in house, without significant outsourcing?We
are trying to make a huge difference - by advancing space technology
substantially. To do that we had to design the Falcon rockets from
scratch because the space supply chain is just not an effective one. At
SpaceX we make the engines, the avionics, the primary structure - I
think we've got a fundamentally better design: our airframe, engines,
electronics and launch operations are much lower cost.

What about performance though? Anyone can cut costs.Our engine has the highest thrust-to-weight ratio of any engine in the
world, our airframe has the best mass fraction of any rocket in the
world - and our electronics are the lightest and have have the most
computing power over that of any other rocket.

What is it that makes your rockets
capable of scaling from low Earth orbit missions to Mars trips? NASA
needs a complete redesign for such ideas.I am not saying the rockets we have today are suitable for taking
people to Mars. Our spacecraft would be pretty uncomfortable for a six-month journey. It's the next generation of our rockets that could do
that.

Will they be recognisable evolutions of the Falcon 9 series? Or radically different? The booster part of it will probably be recognisable compared to the
next generation of Falcon we're unveiling this year or early next.

SpaceX is crew-rating your capsule and says your "guiding star" is safety. How much of a challenge is it to crew-rate the Dragon?There's a lot of testing that needs to take place. I made sure the
basic design of it is suitable for crew from the beginning. That's why
it has windows and returns safely to Earth. The technology driver there
is our launch escape system, which has high thrust liquid-fuelled escape
engines built into the side walls of the vehicle.

I gather that these hypergolic motors might have planetary landing applications?Yes. The escape system's motors will allow the capsule to land anywhere
in the solar system, whether it has an atmosphere or not - and that's
pretty cool. These motors can even fire supersonically which is
important for Mars: in the higher altitudes of Mars the atmosphere is so
thin that parachutes are completely pointless. So retro thrusters have
to be able to fire when you are supersonic so they have to be very high
thrust.

What is it about you and your
fellow internet entrepreneurs like Amazon's Jeff Bezos, and the Google
guys, that is attracting them to commercial spaceflight, with Sierra
Nevada and Planetary Resources respectively?The common thread is that we all have a natural inclination to push the
frontiers of technology. And space is a very high capital endeavour. So
you need to have done something big to get you the capital to do
something in space - you can't just create a start-up with no capital,
especially in the rocket business.

It
strikes me that your tight in-house control of product design mirrors
the way Apple works. Do you see similarities? Is SpaceX aiming to be the
Apple of space flight?Yes, I guess
there are similarities. In the case of Apple they did originally do
production internally but then along came unbelievably good outsourced
manufacturing from companies like Foxconn. We don't have that in the
rocket business. There's no Foxconn in the rocket business. And rocket
technology is also considered an advanced weapons technology so you
can't really have such a situation - so in our case manufacturing is
necessary.

Planetary travel and mining asteroids will never be practical until we end the witch hunt against nuclear power or until Woodward Mach effect propulsion comes online. Asteroids would supply the uranium. Asteroids could supply sufficient uranium for gigantic atom bomb powered, cosmic ray proof planetary shuttles. Fast breeder reactors would convert U238 into PU239. Don't object unless you wish to do away with the Sun and the entire Milky Way galaxy.

Rodney
on May 26, 2012 6:19 PM

If SpaceX is going to use a Dragon variant capsule to land on Mars, its targeting must be insanely accurate to be able to drop exactly on top of the prelanded, preped and fueld launch stack required to get it back into space?

At least theyll have room in the Bigelow Inflatable cabin on the way too and fro. Would be nice to see even a Deep Space 1 class solar ion drive with solar sail concentrator used for a Lunar L2 to Mars L1 orbit or so tug, transfer shuttle.

Sean
on May 27, 2012 11:57 PM

Good on him! Once again since the government is dragging its heels and making excuses it is up to the private citizens to get on with what needs to be done. He said that space exploration is so expensive because of all the bureaucracy and he is absolutely correct, they just throw on layer after layer of shit until you get something like the space shuttle which was a dismal failure.

Keep going Elon. Don't stop at Mars, just keep going!

fred
on May 28, 2012 8:21 PM

I would not be surprised if people like this, companies like this beat nasa to mars

StephenB
on May 28, 2012 10:16 PM

May I just say kudos to Paul Marks? It's not often we get good questions for Musk like these.

palaceplanetarian2
on May 28, 2012 11:28 PM

Go, Elon, go... Freedom and the entrepreneurs which flourish in freedom are one of our most realistic hopes as source of the creativity necessary for dramatic, real, change

Save us from politically founded, committees always agreeing on compromises based on lowest common denominator solutions that please few but offend even fewer...

Greg
on May 29, 2012 3:55 AM

I love what he is doing, but could he be any more like a James Bond villain? He's a super rich guy in a high technology field with defense applications. His picture is just a nasty scar away from being the next 007 film poster.

Angela
on May 29, 2012 4:01 AM

Sean, no kidding! JFK should have said, "We choose not to go to the Moon because it's too hard. We'll just stand back and wait for private industry to lead the way." Wow, then SpaceX could have just built all this stuff from scratch, and gotten there so much faster.

It's about time we starting thinking outside the box when it comes to space engineering. The space programme has become stagnant and Elon Musk will hopefully ignites everyone's passion for space exploration

Kevin
on May 29, 2012 4:54 PM

Mark,

Use some imagination. All you really need is sufficient thrust to overcome an asteroid's inertia and send it on a path to a central collection point near earth. Say a Lagrange point.

It doesn't matter if it takes years for the asteroid to reach the Lagrange point once you have a steady flow of them going allowing for continuous processing.

Atom bombs and breeder reactors are neither necessary nor desired.

Mark S. Oller
on June 10, 2012 5:56 AM

Kevin,

The atom bombs would propel high speed passenger shuttles with sufficient shielding to protect against cosmic rays and solar flares, not to mention radiation from the nuclear explosions. Hollowed out comets and asteroids could be used. Weight would be no object. Although, I prefer that Polywell IEC fusion rockets made nuclear pulse rockets obsolete.

Gene koehler
on October 9, 2012 5:28 PM

Does the space x dragon lend itself to space junk clean up?
But then who pays for it.